New Divide
by thisgirlscribes
Summary: Kaito finds Pandora and it takes a lot more from the magician than it had any right to.


Disclaimer: I don't own anything except peanuts and three coffee beans.

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><p>Blackness closed in, the light of the moon vanishing in a rolling flood of dark clouds, obscuring vision, rising up around his feet, swarming in until everything he saw was black upon black upon black-<p>

-until there was a flash of light, illuminating the dark for the briefest moments, showing him towering formless shapes of black, faded to a shade of grey by the brilliant light.

Darkness fell again, but not for long, as light –_lightning_– flashed again, the sharp crack striking all around him. Kaito stared around him in wonder, eyes wide, clutching Pandora to his chest.

_It's like being inside a thunderstorm._

Flash.

_Slower_?

Flash.

_Definitely_ _slower_.

Flash.

This time, Kaito could track the lightning as it burst free of the formless black, eyes following the edge of the bolt until it struck more formless black and vanished. The tang as it burnt through the air was something he could almost feel on his tongue, **feeling** the ozone crackle as the world slowed down, time trickling like molasses.

_What's going on?_

Everything was slowing down. Kaito blinked, and it took an age, the inexorable slide of his eyelids shutting, and the achingly long gap before they began to open again. Kaito shuddered. _Let's not do that again… or __that__, either, _he thought as his shoulders continued shaking slowly from his shudder, his body caught with the slow flow of time, his mind moving just as fast as ever.

_Is this because everything's moving slower… or because my mind's working faster?_

**Both.**

**Neither.**

Eyes slowly widening, Kaito could only squeak the first thing that came to mind.

…_Hi?_

**Destroy me?**

**Save me?**

**Protect me.**

**Kill me.**

The dual voice vibrated through his mind, twin echoes bouncing off the inside of his skull as he grinned to cover the pain it was causing him. _Might I inquire_, he thought, cutting off a gasp of pain as the voices overrode him, shaking him apart to the very core.

**I will give…**

**I will take…**

**Everything.**

**Nothing.**

_**What you deserve.**_

Lightning crashed down.

~8~

Nothing. That was everything. Just nothing.

The boy looked up, white falling from above him, tickling his skin and making him sneeze. His hands were clutched around something pretty, red seeping out and glowing… Pretty. Light caught off of it and he smiled absently at it in his hands. It was his. It glowed, beautifully. The boy lifted it up to better see, red illuminating the ground around him, light catching it even better now it was higher up. _Pretty..._

There was a shout, a noise of inarticulate rage, and he looked away from the pretty, to see someone… a man, heavily jowled, walking with a cane, face red with rage, finger jabbing at him as other figures swarmed into the room behind him, black coats making them all clones of the other, blond hair that spilled from under a dark hat, or coldly painted lips curving in a small satisfied smile making no difference to what the boy saw. Not pretty.

_Crows…_ he thought, then wondered why he had. He lowered his hand, tucking the pretty into a pocket in his clothes that he somehow knew would be there - his clothes were dirty, dirty white. Something was wrong about that. White? Not, no, white was good. He chanced a look at the shouting man again, and his black-clad companions. Yes. Dressing in white was _good_. Even if he couldn't quite remember why.

Footsteps alerted him to the crows coming closer. The heavy man with all his shouting and red-faced impotence in the face of power, and the woman with her icy smile painted onto her face in bright red death. Both held metal things in their hands, the light from above splintering on the shiny barrels.

The heavy man spoke, but the sounds made no sense to the boy. He tilted his head to one side, bemused and unaware he was still smiling faintly. The man finished speaking, holding out a hand, and the boy looked at the clean fingertips, stubby fingers without any calluses, only the wrinkling of encroaching age. Hands which hadn't done anything during their lifetime. Spoilt hands. The woman spoke, her sounds a dangerous counterpoint to the other man's demanding tone. She gestured to the man, holding out her hand for a brief moment before withdrawing it.

The boy didn't know them. He didn't know what he wanted, or what they wanted, except to take something from him. Did they want the pretty? The boy gasped with sudden fear, hand flying to his chest, emotion coursing through him. No… No… they …mustn't take things from him. They mustn't. He didn't realise the fear wasn't his own, unable to recognise the outside source of it.

He wouldn't let them take the pretty.

He took a step backwards, legs moving in a graceful arc and drawing him away from the others. The stone in his jacket pulsed warmly, and he curled a hand over the outside of his pocket protectively. It was his. Nobody was taking _anything_ from him.

Silence for a moment, then the man's face became an inarticulate mask of rage, voice cracking angrily, breaking the tableau. Almost as one, the crows drew their hands up, every one holding weapons, pointed at him. Grim determination settled across the boy's face, and he hunched his shoulders back into the cape he was wearing, gaze determined as it searched the room for weaknesses and points of attack.

The other crows were moving towards him slowly now, spreading out to cover the sides. They would think he would run away, and so he would attack. There was no need to think on it, the knowledge was already there, curving with crystalline perfection into his mind. They would think him to do _this_, so he would do _that_ and _that_… and break free.

A sudden shout interrupted him from above, a different voice, panicked, and making the first sense he knew, waking up a part of him he hadn't know existed.

The boy looked up to desperate gold eyes, blond hair in disarray, hand clenched white around metal, and one word that _made sense_.

"KID!"

Kid smiled beatifically, panic ebbing into calm, face upraised, eyes locking with the man on the catwalk above him. Everything was simple now, even as the crows moved into chaos, some still pointing at him, others pointing at the man. The ground creaked and shook under him, white still falling from the sky. Everything was as simple as a pair of gold eyes, locked with his. Still smiling, he fell forwards into the glow of red, uncaring, shrieks of wounded crows following him into the bloody dark.


End file.
